The Philosophy

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TRUST

The Trust is concerned with issues of poverty as it effects the lives of the rural poor. It is particularly interested in the needs and aspirations of new farmers and farm workers from previously disadvantaged communities.

The philosophy of the Trust is very simply to:

• Build People
• Strengthen Community
• Promote Democracy
• Care for the Earth

The Trust operates at three levels, Local, Regional and National.

Local Interventions. The Path out of Poverty (POP) Programme.

We are at present working on 32 farms and touching the lives of 1298 individuals.

The farm workers in this region have been trapped in poverty for many generations. Many of today’s problems were caused originally by the “dop system” where labourers were paid part of their wage in wine. This has now been outlawed but the results remain. The effects of poverty are evident everywhere, poor education, alcoholism, violence to women and children, very high rates of children born with foetal alcohol syndrome, lack of self-esteem and skills amongst  young people, men and women, shockingly high rates of TB  and now increasingly HIV/AIDS all take their toll on the quality of life of children.

The vision of the “ POP”  programme is a healthy, self confident, well trained farm worker community. We concentrate on building the self esteem, capacity and skills of the youth, the next generation, in order to help them avoid the damaging behaviour of the generations before them.

Our experience has been that one good project does not help people break the stranglehold of poverty. We have therefore, over the past 10 years, put in place an integrated community development model which is made up of a number of (currently 17) interlocking projects which farm workers and their children can access at any point.

There are four golden threads which weave their way throughout the POP Programme, these are :

Education, Health, Personal Development and Care for the Earth.

The bottom line is that we do everything possible to “KEEP CHILDREN IN SCHOOL” for as long as possible and help them during this time to heal, strengthen and reach their individual potential.